Paya: Cubans must unite for human rights

ADRIAN SAINZAssociated Press

Published Tuesday, January 14, 2003

MIAMI (AP) -- Cuban dissident Oswaldo Paya, in a speech broadcast from here to the communist island, called his Monday visit with Cuban-Americans a "catalyst" for change and asked that exiles unite with the Cuban people to push for human rights reforms.

Paya, in the United States to drum up support for the pro-democracy Varela Project, said dissidents on the island who risk persecution by challenging the government should inspire Cuban exile groups to support the movement.

The project in May turned in stacks of petitions that backers said were signed by more than 11,000 people asking Cuba's parliament for a referendum on civil liberties. Paya has said an additional 10,000 signatures have since been gathered.

"More than a representative, I am a voice from those thousands of heroes who have signed the Varela Project," Paya told about 200 supporters in Miami in a speech broadcast toward Cuba on Radio Marti.

"We must put Cuba, our people, first. Too many years of physical separation have passed. We live in two different settings, but we are part of one same nation and we have the same future."

He called the Cuban government repressive and referred to exiles as a Diaspora who left the island seeking the same freedoms of expression, assembly and political affiliation which are at the project's core.

"This embrace should be a catalyst for that moment of liberty that won't come in an instant, but instead through a process," Paya said. "Cubans are saying, 'Here is my name, my address, my identification number. I'm not going to submit to fear ... We want change. We want these rights.'"

Paya, 50, is head of Cuba's independent Christian Liberation Movement and has emerged as one of the island's most prominent opposition leaders for his work leading the Varela Project. He traveled to France in December to receive the European Union's top human rights award and has met with Pope John Paul II in Rome and Secretary of State Colin Powell in Washington.

In response to his project, the Cuban government did a petition drive of its own which produced 7 million signatures and decreed that Cuba's socialist system will remain untouchable.

While polls show Paya enjoys support from much of the large Cuban-American community in Miami-Dade County, some South Florida exile groups have publicly disagreed with his statements that the 40-year-old trade embargo against Cuba hasn't yielded positive results.

Members of some Cuban-American groups who have criticized the Varela Project did not attend the invitation-only gathering of selected Cuban-American activists and religious and business leaders. Paya said he planned to meet with his critics privately.

Paya's critics here and among Cuba's other dissident groups also say the project falls short because it asks for elections to the one-party general assembly rather than free elections.

"Whatever solution the referendum seeks is within the socialist constitution, which is the same instrument used by the Cuban government to repress the Cuban people," said Ninoska Perez-Castellon, whose Cuban Liberty Council was not invited to meet with Paya.

"If Paya travels abroad to say in Europe and in Washington that he does not support the embargo and the travel ban should be lifted, he is saying the same things the Cuban government has been asking for," she said.

Paya said political change will come from within Cuba and that he did not visit United States to justify the project or make directives that the U.S. government should follow.

"The embargo is polemic and divisive," Paya said at a news conference after the meeting. "Some think the embargo is the solution of Cuba's problems. It is not a solution. Others say that the solution is though foreign investment, tourism and cultural exchange.

"In both cases, the key protagonist for change is excluded, and that is the Cuban people."